Allah
has revealed many verses in the Qur'an which advise us to travel and see
the world. (6:11) This, of course, is not a command to go on vacation constantly,
rather, it is meant as a learning experience. Allah tells us to look at
former civilizations, ruins of ancient days and upon how no people or generation
is permanent. When we realize that others have passed away before us, we
begin to understand that we, ourselves, will be less than a memory for
generations to come after us. (6:6)

It has been
a long time since I traveled. Too long, if what I learned is any indicator.

My wife and
I arranged to take a trip from New York to Arizona. Yes, the lure of the
Grand Canyon found its way into our collective imagination. One brother
said to me before we left, "When you go to Mecca, you feel insignificant.
When you go to the Grand Canyon you realize you are nothing." Boy was he
right.

Our flight
from JFK was delayed, of course. From our hard waiting room seats we watched
the Saudi Airlines pilots and flight attendants flirting with each other
in their nearby lounge quite blatantly. I wonder if they become more Islamic
during Hajj season? Insha'llah I'll find out one day.

When we finally
arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, we were amazed to see that everything was
cast in hues of sandstone and clay: the buildings, the ground, the people
and the roads. We were truly in another land. The drive north to the Grand
Canyon was pleasant enough. (Our rental car had a great air conditioner.)
It was amazing for me to see wide open countryside, baked to a crisp by
the sun, with a small house here and there. How could anyone live in this
hot place?

When we arrived
at the Grand Canyon and looked upon that great pit for the first time,
both my wife and myself became nervous inside. I hardly expected that I
would feel shaken, but until you look down over a sheer cliff taller than
the world's tallest building, you won't understand how we felt. It is truly
awe-inspiring. (Not to mention there are no guard rails anywhere so one
mis-step and you're history.)

Given that
we were over 7,000 feet above sea level, our breathing became difficult
and we ran out of breath easily. I often remembered from that point on
the verse in the Qur'an where Allah mentions high altitude as related to
the difficulty to breathe. In fact, I remembered so many ayat during this
trip and gained a greater appreciation of their full import that I might
as well have been in school.

The Grand Canyon
is truly an amazing sight to behold. A little tiny river carved it out
over the course of five million years. The tour guides give you a little
paper when you first arrive that describes the age of each exposed layer
of rock. The upper layers are only a few hundred thousand years old, while
the lowest layers are about two billion years old! Talk about feeling like
nothing!

As I gazed
over the multi-colored layers, the remembrance of another Qur'anic verse
came to mind. Allah tells us that just as our colors and races are different
and we can learn from that, so too is the earth filled with many colored
layers which are also a sign of His power. Allah is telling us His earth
is very old and took many ages to form, even as humans have variations
which only time has wrought. (35:27-28)

There are many
peaks, plateaus, and geological formations in the canyon. They all have
names too. You'd be surprised to know that most of them are named after
Hindu gods and such. There is the Brahmin temple, the Shiva Temple, the
Vishnu schist, the Buddhist temple, the Zoroaster temple, the Throne of
Wotan (a Viking god) and about two dozen others. The non-Muslim American
tour guides all said these names as if they were a part of their own heritage.

I reflected
on this for a moment. There was no "Muslim Temple" or "Muhammad Peak" or
anything connected to Islam. All the names were given about a hundred or
so years ago by various explorers and educated men. Did they not know about
Islam? Now before you start saying they were enemies of Islam or hated
Muslims, consider this: even in our modern world, the average person, nay,
even the highly educated person, gives no thought to Islam whatsoever.

In other words,
if some professor was going to write a book on global trends, he or she
would probably not include any mention of Islam or Muslims whatsoever,
other than to say trouble will come from the Middle East one day. The rest
of his book will concentrate on Europe, America and East Asia. The people
who want to keep Islam from popular society have done an excellent job
of keeping Islam hidden behind curtains and many Muslims seem content to
pray to Allah from the shadows. But that is another issue.

(I just hope
the political-oriented secular "Muslims" don't start a crusade to have
some peak in the Grand Canyon named "Crescent Temple" or some other nonsense.)

If you've ever
seen one of those prehistoric dinosaur movies then you'll know how we felt
when we were at the bottom of the canyon. We took a raft ride down the
Colorado river and truly felt we were in "The Land That Time Forgot." (We
didn't take a mule ride down the trails because we thought it was cruelty
to animals after we saw how miserable the mules appeared in the noon-time
118 degree heat. I wouldn't want to have that mule accusing me on Judgment
Day of having pleasure at its expense when there was no real need for me
to ride it.)

The water was
cold and blackish-green. Our raft pilot was a middle-aged woman who spoke
continually of how insignificant the Canyon makes her feel. After an hour
of listening to her narrate the tour, both my wife and I realized that
this non-Muslim was asking for spiritual direction and felt very empty
inside. It was as clear as day. We left the raft a few hours later wishing
we had some way to talk to her and some mechanism of follow-up.

A park ranger
later led our group to view some rock carvings left by the Anasazi Indians
about a thousand years before. To stand there and look upon what was once
important to someone from long ago is quite humbling. The hands that made
those stick figures and animal carvings are dead and crumbled to dust.
What will become of us?

The next leg
of our tour took us to the great Navajo Reservation. But first we passed
through the Petrified Forest and saw trees that had turned to stone over
the course of millions of years. Again, the lessons of our own insignificant
existence came to mind. Then we arrived at Canyon de Chelly. A lush labyrinthine
valley in the process of re-vegetation still inhabited by the Navajo to
this day.

A jeep tour
took us to see cliff-dwellings and petroglyphs made over a thousand years
before and long since abandoned. "In the traces left by (former peoples)
you will learn wisdom" came to my mind. Every time I saw a new set of ruins
I tried to imagine what it was like long ago: full of people and life.
Real people in real homes. People just like you and me. But a few crumbling
bricks are all that remain of those countless souls. What were their Prophets
like?

We spent a
lot of time on the Navajo Reservation. (We left da'wah literature in every
hotel we stayed at.) I was quite surprised to see churches all over the
place. Even in the most desolate of areas I would spot some church or another.
There were Mormon churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic, Assembly of
God, Pentecostal, Baptist and a dozen others. I was quite speechless upon
realizing that these people were worshipping the god of those who killed
their ancestors en masse.

White Catholics
and Protestants, Spanish and American, came to this land and killed almost
all of the tribal people they could find. The survivors were then herded
onto desolate desert tracts and told to stay there where many others died.
Government policies were enacted just a hundred years ago which forcibly
removed children from their parents and banned the practice of their native
religions.

Now those same
Apaches, Hopis and Navajos are going to church and singing "Praise Jesus"
all the while white Americans snicker. The brief revival of old Indian
ways on various reservations has done nothing more than feed the white
New-Age movement by providing Indian souvenirs like Dream Catchers, flute
music, artsy paintings and neat quotes from long dead Indian chiefs.

Something tugged
inside my soul when I witnessed firsthand the contemporary legacy of a
proud people. Many of the men whose faces mirrored the black and white
photographs of their noble ancestors revealed the shadows of alcoholism.
Most of the Native Americans on the Reservation appeared to have become
so assimilated; trading their ancestral solidly grounded spirituality and
cosmology for a diffused "do as you want to do" ethic of Western mass culture.
I could tell there was a great cultural struggle going on in the society
there. Half the Navajos dressed like cowboys (boots, cowboy hats, jeans
and short hair) while the other half had traditional long hair and wore
less identifiable Western dress.

All the Navajo
and Hopi radio stations play country and Western music even though they
have their own music. So complete was the assimilation process that it
could be said that in some sections of the Reservation Navajo identity
is nearly just a quaint New Age feeling rather than a firmly grounded spirituality.
In the same way that someone might call themselves Jewish but then have
less than ten percent Jewish heritage and ethnicity. (Blond hair and blue
eyes does not a Hebrew make.) In fact, I learned that most of the Native
Americans in the region have abandoned the Reservations and now live in
the big cities doing mostly menial labor. Crazy Horse and Geronimo's legacy
had indeed been abandoned-- with only a small percentage still fighting
to hold on to the traditions of their ancestors.

My wife and
I discussed how a da'wah program might be started for Native American people.
The usual short-sighted efforts by our "Islamic workers" would doubly fail
here. A group of dedicated brothers and sisters would have to actually
come and live on the Reservation permanently, work there and become friends
with the local people. (Yes, I know you wouldn't get to be a rich doctor
or engineer there, but you would have a good shot towards the highest places
in Jannah, the real home.)

A business
venture would provide the perfect pretext for such an effort. Local people
could be hired and shown how Islam blesses the relationship between boss
and worker, a Masjid could be built near the business or in town. Free
classes on Islam could be offered, a tight-family atmosphere could unite
the Muslims and the new converts. Free housing could be provided to those
who need it. Respect for native ways would be expressed in both deed and
fact and the Muslims would show what true brotherhood and sisterhood is
all about.

For that phase
to succeed, however, you would have to face up to a very harsh truth. Most
of our "Sheikhs," "Maulanas," "Scholars" and other self-appointed priests
are arrogant, devoid of practical knowledge and filled with unIslamic cultural
ideas. There I said it. Someone had to. But what do you expect? Such is
the condition of "Islamic" education in the Muslim world today that this
is what is produced in many cases. Not all cases, but many. (3:159)

Think about
it. If you take a five year old kid living in an unIslamic "Muslim" culture,
put him in a prison of a school where he is commanded to memorize vast
amounts of words that he can't understand or he'll get a beating, don't
you think the end product would be less than desirable from the standpoint
of the needs of the Islamic movement?

You would need
a caring, understanding, knowledgeable and dedicated person or persons
to do da'wah among the Indians of Native America. Of course you need that
for da'wah to anybody but especially with those who have been crushed completely
by America so much so that they now identify with their oppressor. Author
Paolo Friere elucidates this strange master-slave process in "The Pedagogy
of the Oppressed".

The more I
learned of Native American practices and beliefs the more I saw how Islam
would be easy to introduce here. Basic American Indian religious practices
resemble Hinduism to a great degree. Complete with spirits, gods, mysticism
and the like. If the Blessed Prophet Muhammad can eradicate idol-worship
in a pagan society, then we can at least attempt the same with a people
who have mixed tribal paganism with Christian paganism.

We have advantages
as Muslims in this endeavor. Christian missionaries come in and say that
all Native American beliefs and practices are from the Devil. Then they
command that they must abandon their culture and become like Westerners
to be saved.

Islam, however,
takes the basic attitude that there is some truth in the beliefs of others
which came from authentic Prophets in the past. We don't automatically
condemn others but rather seek to understand their beliefs. (6:108) Then
we can compare their teachings with Islam and gradually invite them to
abandon what people made up in their past and to affirm what truth they
have which Islam promotes. The "Great Spirit" is Allah, we would teach,
and there is no need for other spirits or gods between us and the Great
Spirit. This notion was first fostered during a discussion I had with a
Navajo Muslim brother in New Mexico a few years back. This brother stated
to me: "The reason I became a Muslim is because Islam takes the traditions
and conceptualizations of my people to a purer level. I believe that my
Navajo identity is complemented by my Islamic beliefs and practices."

Christianity
is never fully practiced anywhere in the world because it is a man-made
religion hand-crafted from pagan sources. It never has any impact on the
lives of a people or community other than to give them a feel-good ideology
they can recall on Sunday. Islam, however, gives a life program which is
designed to transform the individual on a day-to-day basis.

Navajo, Hopi
and Apache traditional beliefs are filled with rituals that are performed
every day. (22:67) Wouldn't it be easier to offer Islam to a people who
will then be encouraged to retain their unique cultural characteristics
and at the same time joining the community of believers? All it requires
is dedicated people. There are already a couple of Muslims from among the
Navajos and others. Who will answer the call and set forth united to call
these people to Allah's way? (2:143)

There is a
unique task for everyone in this life. A small or large part in a larger
picture. Beyond our daily affairs of work and family, Islam calls upon
us to act on a higher level for the common good of ourselves and all of
humanity. There's one thing I learned on this trip and it is that we must
all listen to our hearts and answer this call. Only when we act out our
faith in the world around us do we become truly happy--we become our faith
rather than perform it externally.